The Second Sight of Moira Grantt

Moira Grantt was born in Banffshire, Scotland in 1779 on a cold, blustery day in November in the coastal village of MacDuff.

Her mother, Georgina, a member of the upper class Duffs, began the labor of bringing her tiny daughter into the world at six o’clock of a Sunday morn. Her father, Ian, was a direct descendent of Sir Laurence and Maurice Grantt, the first official sheriffs of Inverness in the 12^th and 13^th century.

The tiny, unborn infant Moira would reach epic recognition for another, more peculiar reason. The Scots called it the “sight of seers” or second sight.

Georgina sensed difficulty with this child’s birth. She endured, as the family crest emblazoned, “Stand Fast,” with frightful pain for more than five hours. By late afternoon, Moira took her first breath, although in short heaves to the concern of the attending midwife.

“I believe this child wants special care,” Anna Kilgore, Georgina’s midwife said.

She handed the squalling, scarlet-hued infant to its mother.

When the infant’s sea blue eyes opened so suddenly, Georgina was frightened. It was as if the minutes old infant was looking through her. She feared this was an omen that this child had the “sight of the seers.”

By the time Moira was a toddler her eyes grew more electrifying. She had the habit of turning her head so quickly it seemed she could literally revolve it in a full circle, flipping her mane of copper hair to the four winds.

The child’s mother watched as the little girl recoiled from unseen dangers. Moira burst into tears at the mere sight of the portraits of long dead ancestors hanging on the walls of their upper class home.

When Georgina taught her daughter needlework, the child embellished the stitches she was taught, so that the final work was that of a seasoned proficient.

Moira Grantt grew into a reedy, fresh-faced lass whose ochre tresses and tourmaline eyes, her most astonishing features.

Lads avoided her to the consternation of Ian and Georgina Grantt. It wasn’t because she wasn’t the prettiest lass in Banffshire. It was because she knew more than the boys who bothered to engage her in conversation.

“Mam, why do the lads not like me?” Moira asked.

“I think the lads would like you best if you did not make them appear as dumb as oxen,” Georgina said.

Moira pondered this even as her ever roving thoughts strayed.

“What time will Aunt Elsie be arriving?” Moira asked.

“How did you…Moira, I do not recall telling you my sister was visiting this day.”

“But, she will. I know it,” Moira insisted.

This was not the first time Moira knew something she had not been told.

But, how? Georgina thought.

Georgina remembered the darting glance Moira gave her mother minutes after birth.

Was it true? Did Moira have the sight of seers? Georgina wondered.

When their terrier, Archie was lost, Moira was the one to know where he was. Just like she knew were her father’s pipe was and where the needlework shears were, after exhaustive searches.

It frightened Georgina that MacDuff villagers were already whispering about Moira’s unusual ability. The old women were repelled by Moira’s second sight. Children laughed and jeered when she passed by. Moira ignored all of it.  The village men warned Ian such a child of his could bring bad luck on MacDuff and possibly the whole of Banffshire.

Ian thought of his daughter’s gift as “talk” and not much more.

MacDuff hugged the sea and the gritty sandy shore. Fishing was the main source of food and business. Such proximity to the sea brought many fierce storms and seamen lost, even with many cairns lighted to guide sailors’ way to shore.

One autumn week before one of these sudden, violent storms struck the coastline of MacDuff, Moira sat quietly on a garden bench looking toward the sea. Her long tresses tossed lazily in a gentle wind. She was dressed in her copper wool frock and for warmth, her hand woven wool tartan shawl in clan plaid of gold, black and scarlet. She worked with needle and thread on a rose for a pillow.

When she glanced back toward the sea, she saw a large fishing vessel, waves reaching nearly to its masts and taking on sea water. She blinked; but, the image was gone.

Moira often captured the “sight” of people or things that floated across her field of vision like flashes of dreams she had while asleep.

Once, she even saw a flying machine soaring across the great crown of blue Banffshire skies. She most always dismissed them.

Other times, she felt a strange sensation, as she felt at this moment, like a ghost walking across a grave.

She usually forgot these visions. This time, the sinking fishing vessel remained like a tangled vine over her mind.

Moira sensed the powerful image foretold of a disaster at sea. Would it be the sailors in MacDuff in that fishing vessel? She decided that evening to say her prayers, just in case the vision came true.

Whenever she saw these images, she felt as if she could think of nothing else, especially when every detail was so clear in her mind.

The fishing vessel she “saw” had clinker planking like the Vikings in history once used for their ships. She could still see the two muslin top sails and the black, spidery, trawl nets clinging to the ship’s side, like a drenched mane of hair. MacDuff fishing vessels hauled cod and herring. In her mind’s eye, she saw two sailors trying to make their way to the ship’s belly, groping for some sense of stability. A big wave hit and the two men were gone.

Moira stifled a scream.

“Moira, child, what is it?” Georgina asked.

“Mam, which fishing vessels are at sea at the now?” she asked.

“Why do you ask?”

Moira didn’t want to reveal what she’d seen for fear of being admonished by her Mam.

“Aunt Elsie will be here when the storm of three days comes. I will prepare my sleeping quarters for her,” Moira said.

Georgina watched the girl climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Ian arrived for the evening meal and saw the anguished expression on his wife’s face.

“My dear, is something wrong?”

“Husband, are there warnings of a storm ahead? Have you heard any news from the fishermen coming in about a storm?”

“No. It was perfectly good and fine weather. Now, what is this about a storm?”

“Tis likely only your daughter’s ramblings,” she replied.

Georgina sensed that she had begun to trust in her daughter’s moods and perceptions of things that had not yet happened.

In less than a fortnight, the skies over the shire grew dark and threatening. Aunt Elsie arrived as rain began to open from the leaden clouds.

“Oh, my! I bring the rains,” Elsie said.

            Georgina knew it wasn’t Elsie who brought the rains. She was frightened that her daughter saw the coming storm. Would there be a wreck at sea? It was not as if it hadn’t happened before.

Fishermen in MacDuff believed rain produced an abundance of fish. Some of the smaller vessels had already headed out. The biggest fishing vessel finally finished bringing supplies aboard.

Moira watched from an upstairs window. When the wind blew the sails wider, it was as if her vision returned. She rubbed her eyes. The ship’s anchor was pulled and the sails carried it further out to sea. The ship was real and not imagination.

As the wind howled into the early evening, Moira felt anxious. She helped prepare the evening meal, constantly looking out the window toward the sea. Each time she did, Georgina grew more anxious.

“Sister, are you unwell?” Elsie asked

“I would speak of my worry when we are alone,” Georgina said.

The rain came down in long, silvery sheets and pounded against the slate shingles on the roof.

“Father is late arriving,” Moira said.

“Lots of mud from the heavy rains makes the horse slower,” Aunt Elsie said.

As the hour passed the time for their evening meal, Georgina had an uneasy feeling.

Had something happened to Ian? She wondered.

She watched Moira’s face carefully. If something bad happened to Ian, Moira would be first to know it.

It was nearly midnight when Ian finally arrived. He was soaked from head to toe and his boots sloshed with each step.

“Husband, where have you been?”

“On the beach. The cairns were lighted but…it crashed…the fishing vessel of Thomas Kilduff,” Ian answered.

Moira lowered her head, her tangle of hair drooping on her shoulders.

Georgina’s eyes darted toward her daughter.

Moira knew about this. She said as much when she asked about the storm.

Later that evening after all had gone to bed, Georgina told Ian what Moira said.

“How could she know wife? Are you saying she has the sight of the seers?”

“Husband, I tell you. She knew the storm was coming, as sure as she must have seen that ship sink,” Georgina said.

Ian’s expression told his wife he sensed it too.

“It did trouble me when you asked about a storm. There are always storms, here in Mac Duff,” Ian said.

“There aren’t ship wrecks. On the morrow we should pay our respects to the men who died,” Ian added.

“I am grieved for Deirdre Kilduff. How will she and her two children survive with Thomas gone?” Georgina asked.

“The village takes care of our own. She’ll not be wanting for food or a place to live. I’m as sure Thomas had some funds put by. Time for sleep, wife. There’s much to do on the morrow. Say nothing about Moira’s vision…if a vision it was,” Ian said.

Moira Grantt would have many more of these “visions” some during daylight hours and others in her sleep. She kept a log of them to ease her mind when nothing came of a vision.

Ian and Georgina came to fear them and yet, relied on them for protection.

It was Moira’s vision of a drought that prevented Ian’s loss of his crops.

Often, she would sit before a fire and felt her mind floating into the pictures in the dancing flames. Other times, she would see images in the well from whence she drew water.

One event that would cause Moira to flee occurred when she was nineteen. She sat quietly with Georgina, whilst doing their needlework of a late summer afternoon. One of the Kilduff sons, James, strolled past the wooden fence at the front of the Grantt compound.

Moira was seized with a vision sharper than she’d ever seen before. James was lit afire. She blinked and watched the young lad cross over the road into the woods beyond.

“James! No! She called.

“Moira what is it? Georgiana asked.

“James…He is in danger. We must stop him.”

“What kind of danger? He is just off to play with the other lads, my dear,” Georgina said.

“No, Mam. I am sure he is in danger. Fire...all over him.”

Georgina knew that to go after the lad would expose Moira’s visions to all of MacDuff. Still, she would not risk a lad’s life.

“Let us follow him, daughter.”

With that, Georgina and Moira hurried along in the foot path of James Kilduff.

They saw him sitting at the edge of the narrow creek with something in his hands. It was a torch he was about to set ablaze.

“No! James! No!” Moira called.

Before she could reach the boy, a live spark fell onto his wool tunic and began to burn. Within seconds, his breeches lit afire and James Kilduff was engulfed in flames.

His screams were terrifying to Moira and Georgina.

Moira reached him and rolled him on the ground and into the water’s edge. But, it was too late. The child was in shock and badly burned.

The whole of MacDuff blamed Moira for calling out to the boy and startling him.

The town’s anger didn’t subside when the whispers about Moira added to the Grantt family’s scandal. Ian and Georgina were shunned for having such a daughter.

Ian decided to send Moira off to live with his sister, in Portnoy, some fifty miles northwest of Banffshire.

Moira’s heart was broken to leave her parents and MacDuff. She knew the death of James Kilduff was not her fault.

She packed her things in an old sewing duffle and kissed her mother goodbye. She and Ian, heavy of heart, rode silently to Portnoy. Moira felt frightened by the prospect of living in a large town with so many more people.

When they finally arrived in Portnoy, it was late afternoon and the sun was already dipping low in the sky. Portnoy, like MacDuff was a portside town. Her Aunt Adairia and Uncle Edward Clarke hurried to greet them.

The home resembled a manor house with two floors and a large sitting room beyond the heavy oak front doors. It was twice the size of her childhood home. It had a front and back courtyard of moderate size and well tended gardens and small bowers of trees.

Moira had not seen the Clarkes since she was a bairn.

She saw clearly where she got her copper tresses from. Her aunt wore her’s atop her head in a small roll. Uncle Edward looked startlingly similar to her own father, except that his bushy hair was snow white.

Aunt Adairia prepared their evening meal and then Moira bid her father goodbye. She would never again see him or her mother.

For a time, Moira kept busy which her aunt and uncle. She slept in a room of her own just as she had in MacDuff.

Her aunt never mentioned the incident. She needn’t have. It was from Aunt Adairia that the sight of seers passed to Moira.

By the winter of that year, Moira began having the dreams again. She vowed she would not allow these dreams to cause trouble for her aunt and uncle.

“Moira, you are having dreams, aren’t you?” Aunt Adairia asked.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I have those same dreams. It is from the Grantt curse,” Aunt Adairia said.

“The Grantt curse?”

“Yes. Many, many years ago, a child was born to your great, great, great grand mam with the strange ability to see things from the past and those of the future. The members of our clan were horrified and had the child drowned to protect them from evil.”

“How do you know my thoughts?” Moira asked.

“It’s part of the Grantt curse. Some who have had the sight of seers also had the ability to read thoughts. Not all thoughts mind, you, lass. Just those thoughts that are nearest to our own senses,” Aunt Adairia said.

Moira didn’t quite understand.

“Who placed the curse on the Grantt clan?” she asked.

“In those days, things that were different were believed to be a curse. Such like a child born deformed or a sudden storm that causes shipwrecks. It’s our men who look to place blame who things that don’t happen often,” Aunt Adairia said.

“Why was I cursed? Why not my brothers?” she asked.

“You were the last born after three sons. That, of itself, is a curiosity for a clan that has so few women.”

“Me mam told me when I was born the midwife saw in my eyes the sight of seers. How could that be in a tiny bairn?”

“Old women in clans hold fast to their old beliefs. You have unusual color in your eyes. There are blue eyed, brown eyed and even a few green eyed Grantts in the clan. None have your strange blue-green color. When the midwife saw your eyes, she saw their quickness and the color and knew you were carrying the Grantt clan curse. It is a well known curse. Your uncle and I moved away from MacDuff before the talk started about me,” Aunt Adairia said.

“What shall I do to hide it here in Portnoy?” Moira asked.

“Keep your thoughts down deep…even if you see bad things.”

“Know this, not a Scotsman has lived who has not been wanting for a battle. Long before you were born, Scotsmen fought kings’ armies. The very year of your birth, there was a battle waged, it was the battle of Flamborough Head. The brave Scotsman, John Paul Jones, fought the British Navy. When his ship the Bohomme Richard sank, he escaped by capturing the HMS Serapis.”

“Aunt? May I tell you of a vision I had? It fears me such I cannot force it from my mind,” Moira said.

“Your visions are safe with me.”

“I see many Scots dying in the streets of the town, Paisley. I see Scots bent over in pain, unable to eat for the disease in their bodies. I see fear throughout the town and the undertaker hurrying to build wooden coffins and bodies in those coffins laid to rest,” Moira said.

“Oh my dear. Do not ever speak of this vision to anyone. The vision you speak of is it from the past? The present? The future?”

“I cannot say. The sickness goes as far as Glasgow,” Moira said.

“You must never speak of this. It would cause a panic. If it is just a vision. Let the vision lie where it may.”

Moira felt comfort with her aunt who understood her visions. Often, the two spoke wordlessly to the chagrin and disdain of Uncle Edward.

Moira remained with her aunt and uncle for a period of nearly five years, longer than an unmarried lass should. Aunt Adairia and Uncle Edward thought of Moira as the child they never had. Moira felt protected and safe in Portnoy. But, she feared she had remained too long.

One night, just as she planned to leave, she had a vision of the Clarke manor being completely empty. She saw Aunt Adairia lying in a coffin in a black dress with a white lace collar. Beside her coffin was that of Uncle Edward. He wore his Sunday suit with the stiffly starched collars.

Moira sprang out of her bed thinking the vision was not a dream. She glanced around the room and recognized her room.

The next morning, Aunt Adairia knocked on Moira’s bedroom door.

“Come quickly. I need you to get help. Uncle Edward has fallen ill.”

Moira hurried to don her cape and hurried to the home of Doctor Pilkin. He saw the young woman at his surgery door and bid her enter.

“What is it, my child?” Doctor Pilkin asked.

“It’s Uncle Edward. Oh do hurry! He’s fallen ill.”

By the time Moira returned home with the doctor in tow, Uncle Edward was dead.

Aunt Adairia was beside herself with grief. Moira tried her best to comfort her aged aunt to no avail.

Moira had another vision of her uncle. In the vision, Uncle Edward was looking down from billowing clouds and reaching for something. Moira was aghast when she saw what it was: Aunt Adairia.

Her aunt took her husband’s hand and disappeared with him into the clouds.

It was in 1831 that Adairia, frail and detached from the world around her, shared a final vision with Moira.

She saw a malevolent storm, a pitch black sky and many boats lost at sea. She told Moira of one hundred bodies of sailors, who drowned.

 Adairia repeated over and over, “bad day for Scots.”

Moira’s vision of the people of Paisley dying in droves came to fruition. In 1831, cholera spread like wildfire from town to town across the whole of Scotland and beyond into other European countries.

In Portnoy, Doctor Pilkin rushed from place to place trying to prevent the disease from spreading.

Aunt Adairia took ill in the month of September in 1832 and died within a few days of contracting the disease. It was left to Moira to bury her aunt.

Now, Moira was all alone in Portnoy. She thought she might return to MacDuff. Nearly two decades passed since she left the town of her birth. Her parents were growing old. Her brothers all had families of their own to care for.

Moira suddenly realized she was a spinster and had no place she called home.  Days after her aunt’s death, there was a letter from Uncle Edward’s solicitor, Dennis Jamiston. He requested her presence in his office in town.

Moira arranged for the carriage to take her to the premises of Mr. Jamiston. She had never been in a solicitor’s office before. She was wide-eyed with wonder at the size of the building and Mr. Jamiston’s office.

The odor of oak wood was pervasive. Moira loved the gleaming antique look of the paneled walls.

“Do be seated, Miss Grantt. I am charged with the duty of reading your Uncle’s last will and testament.”

Moira sat silently, feeling overwhelmed as Mr. Jamiston read the will.

“Miss Grantt, it appears you are the sole inheritor of your Uncle Edward and Aunt Adairia’s estate.

Moira’s face went pale.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“It means that you have an endowment of 5,000 pounds per year.  The Clarke home, property and all of its furnishings belong to you,” Mr. Jamiston said.

“I see,” was all Moira could reply.

“Your aunt and uncle had no children and you are the only child who lived with them since your youth,” he said.

“Is there anything I need do” she asked.

“Just sign all of these papers and that is all that is required,” Mr. Jamiston said.

In the carriage ride back to her aunt and uncle’s home, Moira felt as if she was dreaming. It was strange that she had never had any premonition of what her aunt and uncle planned to do. She hoped maybe she no longer had the sight of seers.

When she arrived at the front door, she felt as if she was in a very strange place, very strange indeed.

She pondered what her inheritance meant. She would always have a home and enough of an annual stipend to banish any concerns.

The very next day, she decided to visit her aunt and uncle’s grave. The shrill September wind was at her back.

“Oh Aunt Adairia, Uncle Edward, how good of you to provide for me so generously,” she said to the cold marble headstones.

She sat down at the bench provided for mourners and began to cry.

As she sat with the stillness of the cemetery of St. Andrew, she felt that odd aura surrounding her. This was always the start of those visions she hoped she no longer had.

She gave a slight shudder and pulled her wrap around her shoulders tighter. Her eyes still fixed on her aunt and uncle’s tombstone, Moira saw a great war. A war like no other she had ever envisioned. Hundreds of men in uniforms marched across great fields of farmers. Some already lay dead or bleeding.

What is this vision? She wondered.

Scotland in the 1830s was at peaceful. The country was benefitting from the huge new machines that provided work for men in shipyards, the mines and textile mills.

“Aunt, I need your help. Wherever you may be, I ask for your guidance. You are the only one who understands these visions. How can I know if this awful vision of war will happen?”

Moira heard only the whistle of the wind. She hurried home.

It took her a few months before she was fully accustomed to her new role as mistress of the house. She welcomed several visitors who had been friends and acquaintances of her aunt. All offered their condolences even as cholera was still a threat.

Fortunately, by the end of 1841, the disease was all but forgotten in memory. Moira was thankful for that.

Moira had a very small social circle of ladies who had been regular guests of Aunt Adairia. She felt she wanted to open her home to others. Moira was nearing thirty-five years old. She believed she would never marry.

She planned an evening soiree on Christmas Eve 1846. She delighted in decorating the large sitting room with greenery. Ladies of 1846 were Edwardians in every sense of decorum. When Moira’s guests arrived, they were dressed in their finest. For ladies of these ages, that meant their velvets and laces, their favorite hand-carved cameos and long strings of pearls with precious gemstone clasps. In their silvery hair, they wore jeweled hairpins that sparkled and caught the light.

Moira offered the prerequisite before dinner sherry. When the dinner bell rang, the ladies sashayed gaily to the dining room where a groaning board was filled with wonderful dishes prepared by cook and served by Moira’s newly hired parlor maid, Anne.

When dinner was through, Moira led the ladies to the parlor. Anne served them hot spiced punch from Aunt Adairia’s cut glass punchbowl.

“Ladies, your attention if you please,” Moira said.

The room went silent.

“I was hoping we could enjoy a parlor game this evening,” Moira said.

The ladies all nodded in agreement.

Mrs. MacPherson suggested a word game. Anne provided small pieces of paper and pencils. Each of the ladies was to write down the first word that came to their mind. Then, each player would guess the word written. When it was Moira’s turn, she wrote down a single word, “War.” She had no idea why she wrote that particular word.

None of the ladies guessed her word. When she announced what it was, her guests went silent.

“Miss Grantt, why was “war” the first word that came to your mind?” Mrs. Olcott asked.

Moira didn’t know if she should say. The women pressed her to tell.

“Miss Grantt, some of us have heard you have second sight,” Mrs. Olcott said.

“How do you come to hear that?” Moira asked.

“I have a nephew, Arthur, who married a lass from Banffshire,” she replied.

“Is it not true?” Mrs. MacPherson asked.

“Yes. I am once from Banffshire. My parents live there still. It is a sad story I wish not to recall,” Moira said.

She didn’t want to tell about her vision of the shipwreck or the child, James Kilduff, killed by fire.

The women played their game until it was time to leave. She saw each guest to the door and retired for the evening. She wanted to keep a record of the guests and the event in her journal.

She always kept a journal since she was a young girl. As she prepared for bed, she sat propped in her chaise lounge writing her recollection. The stillness of the night brought on another vision. She began to write what she saw:

She saw a very terrible, bloody war. Men from the highlands and lowlands joined large armies. In the vision, she saw the enemy firing and men dying on open fields. She wanted the vision to end, but nothing shook her from the aura of the sound of war or the sight of the battlefield filled with dead bodies, blood running in long rivers everywhere.

When the vision ended, she sensed the smell of smoke. It shook her to her conscious mind, she realized she had left her shawl near the fireplace in her room and it caught fire. The smoke was blinding. She screamed for help.

Anne ran to her aid. But, the smoke was so thick in the room. Anne hurried out to the street to alert the garda. By the time, the firemen arrived, Moira Gantt was dead.

When her body was removed, only her singed journal had survived. Her effects were sent to her parents in Banffshire. Her books and journal were donated to the library where they remained.

In 1914, a traveler, Anne Findley, happened onto the journal. She was fascinated that it survived the fire.

“Do you know the author of this journal?” she asked.

“Why yes. It was that strange woman, Moira Grantt. She lived in Banffshire many years ago. She moved away to Portnoy, after she predicted a ship wreck and the fire that killed that little boy, James Kilduff. It’s said she also predicted the cholera plague, though that was not always certain,” the librarian said.

“Have you read this journal?” Anne Findley asked.

“No mam. And I shall not either. Tis a curse upon anyone to read the words of Moira Grantt.”

Anne Findley was consumed with desire to own this journal though she knew not why.

“Would you sell this journal then?” she asked.

“Nay. Why would you want it? No one ever touches it for fear of some evil curse upon them.”

“I’ll pay you whatever you ask for it,” Anne said.

“You may have it. We will be well rid of such a thing,” the librarian said.

She handed the journal to Anne as if she was unloading the most fearsome object of her life.

Anne Findley read the journal accounts Moira Grantt had written. It was the last entry that made Moira Grantt famous. She had predicted in her final entry the First Great World War.